According to Pliny
the Egyptians relished the leek and the onion. Juvenal exclaims:
'Surely a very religious nation, and a blessed place, where every
garden is overrun with gods!' The survivals of totemism among the
ancient Greeks are very interesting. Families named after animals
and plants were not uncommon. One Athenian gens, the Ioxidae, had
for its ancestral plant the asparagus. One Roman gens, the
Piceni, took a woodpecker for its totem, and every member of this
family refused, of course, to eat the flesh of the woodpecker. In
the same way as the nations of the Congo Free State, the Latins
had an antipathy to certain kinds of food. However, an animal or
plant forbidden in one place was eaten without any compunction in
another place. 'These local rites in Roman times,' says Mr. Lang,
'caused civil brawls, for the customs of one town naturally
seemed blasphemous to neighbors with a different sacred animal.
Thus when the people of dog-town were feeding on the fish called
oxyrrhyncus, the citizens of the town which revered the
oxyrrhyncus began to eat dogs. Hence arose a riot.' The antipathy
of the Jews to pork has given rise to quite different
explanations. The custom is probably a relic of totemistic
belief.
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